June 23, 2005

Religious Reading on the Rise

(Filed under: Industry)

3.4% – Increase in U.S. consumer spending on books in 2004.
17.3% – Increase in spending on religious books during the same period.
(Time, June 13, 2005)

Posted by kevin at 7:47 AM | TrackBack

June 20, 2005

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town Free

(Filed under: Industry)

Cory Doctorow, novelest and editor of the blog Boing Boing, has released his latest book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and you can snag a free copy. Doctorow has released the book under a Creative Commons license and explains:

As with my first and second novels, I've posted the entire text of this book online under a Creative Commons license that allows the unlimited, noncommercial redistribution of the text. You can send it around, paste it into a chat, beam it to a friend's PDA, or print out a chapter to hand out in the university common room. Like Woody Guthrie said, "Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

The whole point of giving away electronic books is to experiment with electronic text and spot where the new opportunities for earning a writer's living lie -- working with my audience, not against them. So with every release, I've tried some experimentation. This book is no exception.

He's also releasing the book in developing nations as if it were public domain. Read more about Doctorow's open licensing.

Posted by kevin at 7:45 PM | TrackBack

Stan Guthrie Interviews Hugh Hewitt

(Filed under: Interviews)

Conservative radio personality, author and blogger Hugh Hewitt talks with Stan Guthrie about his most recent book, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that's Changing Your World.

Hewitt covers much of the same territory that's in his book, especially the connection between the Protestant Reformation and the current blog "information reformation," the impact blogs have on businesses (he gives a recent PepsiCo example), how you can start your own blog, and what he sees as the future of blogging: aggregate blogs.

Posted by kevin at 7:45 AM | TrackBack

June 3, 2005

Taming a Liger: Spiritual Lessons from Napoleon Dynamite

(Filed under: Pop Culture)

Wow. Spiritual lessons mined from the indie flick Napoleon Dynamite. The very thought of reading Napoleon-inspired prose makes me laugh.

Get a load of this bit of marketing copy:

Kick off your moon boots, grab a quesa-dilluh, and discover a God who truly can make your wildest dreams come true. Sweet!

Taming a Liger: Unexpected Spiritual Lessons from Napoleon Dynamite by Jeff Dunn and Adam Palmer should be available now.

Update: Read our interview with Taming the Liger author Adam Palmer.

Posted by kevin at 4:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A Long Way Down with Nick Horby

(Filed under: Book Buzz)

Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About a Boy is back with the joyously sadistic A Long Way Down. The basic premise is four suicide jumpers meet on the top of a building and rather than make the plunge decide to form their own twisted support group. Sounds very Hornby-esque.

It comes out June 7 and you can check Time for the early review or the Guardian for a lengthy profile of Hornby.

Posted by kevin at 8:04 AM | TrackBack

June 2, 2005

The Washingtonienne: Blog Slut Turned Book Slut

(Filed under: Book Buzz)

Last year we heard about the prostitute/blogger who lasted two weeks before her sexcapades in Washington D.C. were outed. Now Jessica Cutler's book is out, The Washingtonienne, which we're supposed to believe is a fictional novel. She insists the storylines and characters are composites, but it's pretty much all based on fact.

"I'd never written a novel before," she said. "So, the first draft, I handed it in, and my editor said, 'This is all wrong.' She said it wasn't like a novel."

"I had to go back and clean everything up," Cutler said, "and use my imagination."

More like her memory. You can even read a thrilling excerpt of when her blog goes public, which pretty much reads like what actually happened.

So that's how easy it is to score a six-figure book deal, huh?

To further complicate the story she's facing a lawsuit for invasion of privacy, which is kind of funny. What do you expect when you pay a coworker $400 to have sex with you and keep it quiet?

Posted by kevin at 7:24 PM | TrackBack